URUGUAY 1. General Trends After Slowing for Three Years, the Uruguayan Economy Grew at a Faster Rate in 2017 Than the Year Befor
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Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean ▪ 2018 1 URUGUAY 1. General trends After slowing for three years, the Uruguayan economy grew at a faster rate in 2017 than the year before and posted its fifteenth consecutive year of expansion. According to preliminary figures, gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 2.7% and is expected to expand at a rate of around 2% in 2018. As will be seen later, economic performance was uneven across sectors, with a combination of favourable and less favourable results. On the fiscal front, the Government continued grappling with a persistent overall public sector deficit, which stood at 3.6% of GDP at the end of the year. Despite implementing several contractionary measures since 2015, the Government does not have much more room to rein in spending and has failed to reduce the deficit meaningfully. The global financial situation led to the Uruguayan peso appreciating against the dollar in 2017, while the country’s monetary policy, focused as it is on managing growth in the monetary aggregate M1, was greatly influenced by fluctuations in money demand. Inflation was unusually low throughout the year, which allowed the Government to concentrate on other policy aspects while contributing to improvements in some social indicators. The upturn in economic activity was linked to improved regional and extraregional external demand, a recovery in consumer confidence and a fall in imports. Investment contracted once again, returning to levels seen prior to the commodity supercycle. Regional demand from Brazil, which had been significantly affected by the crisis in that country, showed signs of improving towards the end of 2017, although trade policy challenges remained. From the second half of the year, the demand for tourism services from Argentine visitors —buoyed by the appreciation of the Argentine peso— contributed substantially to the expansion of the commerce and accommodation sectors. Demand remained strong in the first months of 2018 and the sector enjoyed its best high season on record. 2. Economic policy (a) Fiscal policy In 2017, the Government adopted measures to avoid an expansionary fiscal policy. On the revenue side, an increase in personal income tax rates and other fiscal measures more than offset the decline in the surplus reported by State-owned companies. An increase of 3 percentage points in the consular rate on goods imports came into force in 2018, although this excludes goods imported from the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), the consular rate on which increased by 1 percentage point. Meanwhile, outgoings rose slightly in real terms. Increases in pensions were almost completely offset by a real-term decline in public expenditure and investment. The Government adopted policy measures to defer the final budget of its mandate until 2018 and to increase its control over investments by autonomous agencies. 2 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) As a result of these revenue and expenditure measures, the public sector primary deficit declined year-on-year in 2017, from 0.5 to 0.25 points of GDP. With debt interest remaining at 3.3% of GDP, the overall deficit declined by just 0.3 percentage points. As regards borrowing, Uruguay’s liabilities increased to 66.0% of GDP at the end of 2017, up 4 percentage points on 2016. The rise was due to the issuance of two global bonds in nominal pesos (not indexed to inflation) in July (5-year bond) and in September (10-year bond). These were the country’s first issues of this kind in the international markets and attracted very high demand. In addition to providing extra financing, they incorporated earlier bond issues, thereby releasing the Government from repayment obligations that would soon be falling due, and helped to establish a long-term benchmark for the nominal peso yield curve. By 2017, the bulk of Government debt was in local currency, was held by residents and had maturities of more than five years. Net debt also increased by 2 percentage points to 32.0%. As of late 2017, the country held contingent credit lines with multilateral organizations worth the equivalent of 4.2% of GDP. (b) Monetary policy Monetary policy was explicitly contractionary in 2017. Faced by significant growth in money demand and despite a rising economic growth rate over the year, the Monetary Policy Committee gradually moderated the expansion of monetary aggregates. Specifically, the average annual increase in the expanded M1 monetary aggregate stood at 18.7% in the final quarter of 2017, while the target range in the first quarter of 2018 was for an increase of between 14% and 16%. The central bank lowered its domestic currency reserve requirements in September and abolished the option of purchasing monetary regulation bills in dollars in November, thus reducing growth in the monetary base to an annual rate of 7.0% in December. However, the base multiplier increased by enough to offset the lower growth rate of the monetary base. Regarding the components of expanded M1, on-demand and saving deposits grew at the expense of a contraction of cash in circulation, which was consistent with financial inclusion measures designed to make debit card use more attractive. At its first meeting of 2018, the Monetary Policy Committee confirmed its contractionary monetary policy by reducing the year-on-year target range for expanded M1 growth to between 11% and 13%, with a view to managing inflationary expectations. (c) Exchange-rate policy The central bank operates a floating regime with targeted interventions aimed at avoiding sharp swings in the exchange rate. In the new global context, where dollars are plentiful, the dollar exchange rate remained constant in 2017, at around 28.5 pesos. The real effective exchange rate appreciated in the first months of 2017, but then remained stable throughout the second half of the year. The Uruguayan peso depreciated against the currencies of neighbouring countries, especially the Argentine peso, and the appreciation it had experienced against the rest of the world throughout 2016 and up to the first half of 2017 momentarily came to an end. It appreciated once again in the first months of 2018 against both the region’s currencies and the rest of the world’s, although this trend reversed in May, when the Uruguayan peso depreciated slightly against currencies outside the region. However, it strengthened significantly in relation to Argentina’s and Brazil’s, which depreciated more relative to the rest of the world. The dollar had appreciated by 8% against the Uruguayan peso in the four weeks prior to this report going to press. In the 12-month rolling period to March, the central bank built up reserves worth 6.4 points of GDP. Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean ▪ 2018 3 (d) Other policies One of the challenges that Uruguay has sought to address in recent years is the impact of the relative ageing of its population, which has placed a growing strain on social security financing. Certain demographic aspects, coupled with the increasing formalization of the labour market, the maturing of reforms implemented years ago and efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit have placed the issue of social security financing at the front and centre of policy discussions. Specifically, the Government implemented measures to solve the problem of workers affected by the 1996 pension reform transition, involving estimated outlays totalling some US$ 2.4 billion. Furthermore, proposals have been made to reform the retirements and pensions service of the armed forces, which is heavily in deficit, to bring it into line with the rest of the system. 3. The main variables (a) The external sector In 2017, the trade balance posted a current account and capital surplus of 1.6% of GDP, twice its size in 2016. This larger surplus was due to an improvement in the goods and services account that more than offset a rising primary income deficit. Where goods are concerned, exports of the country’s three main products (soybean, meat and pulp) grew particularly strongly, as did income from goods under merchanting. The increase in imports was much more moderate as a result of a sharp decline in capital goods purchases in both the public and private sectors, while imports of intermediate goods and of consumer goods were in line with the rise in exports, although there was particularly strong growth in vehicle purchases. The surplus increased by more in the services sector than in the goods sector, with tourism revenues in particular growing by 23.0%. In the first quarter of 2018, the travel services item boosted the surplus. Growth in Uruguayan goods exports was mainly attributable to an increase in the export volumes of certain products, especially soybean (which accounted for most of this growth by itself) and timber (whose prices fell slightly). Export volumes and prices rose moderately for meat, pulp and rice. China’s importance as a destination for Uruguayan goods exports continued to increase, with the country currently taking 28.0% of shipments. Goods exports to Brazil, Uruguay’s second-largest market, followed much the same path as in previous years, falling to 13.0% of the total. Meanwhile, figures for direct investment were low, consistently with those for gross fixed capital formation in the national accounts. In net terms, direct investment posted a negative balance of US$ 233 million in 2017 (equivalent to a deficit of 0.4% of GDP). This represented a smaller mismatch than in 2016, but investment was still well down on the high values recorded up to 2014. Weak direct investment figures can be explained mainly by the decline in foreign investment flows into the country and by divestment, as measured by profit remittances in excess of the benchmark level.